Follow us

Accountancy Age exclusive: CIMA may change name

The new president of CIMA said this week he expected the institute to consider dropping the word 'accountants' from its title in the next few years in an attempt to keep pace with the rapidly changing business world.

Mike Jeans – who replaced David Melville earlier this month – told Accountancy Age such a change would reflect CIMA’s move to redirect the syllabus towards MBA status and its increased emphasis on management.

Jeans said he wasn’t advocating the change and confirmed no plans were yet on the agenda, but he added he ‘wouldn’t be surprised’ if a full-scale member debate began ‘in the next five to ten years’.

And he predicted the change could come ‘quicker than we all think’.

The institute is re-evaluating its strategy and considering whether its main rivals should be viewed as the other five institutes, or the MBA qualification.

Jeans, denied the institute was suffering an identity crisis, but said: ‘We are the only institute with ‘management’ in our title and that is crucial to us.

‘We are always involved in the real world and have a management bias which is good but now we may be moving towards our qualification being seen as an MBA with a financial bias, and I think that is reflected in our new syllabus.’